Contact list is a common feature in most modern communication devices; including cellular phones and landline phones. Generally, a caller has to manually enter the phone number and other contact information of friends, acquaintances, businesses and other parties into his cellular phone, landline phone and other communication devices. When a caller wishes to call someone from his contact list, he is required to select the phone number of the said party from his contact list; and then select the automatic dial feature of his communication device to automatically dial the selected number. This has the advantage of not having the caller to remember the phone numbers and other contact information of friends, acquaintances, businesses and other parties; which could otherwise be a challenging task. The automatic dial feature of the contact list enables the caller to dial a phone number from his contact list without having to manually dial the said number. Particularly, this feature of modern phones allows driver to safely make a phone call while driving, as it enables them to make a phone call from their contact list without diverting their attention from driving to manually dial a phone number.
However, present phones have significant limitations with respect to the features, functionality and management of their contact list; 1) it requires manual entry of contact information into the contact list; 2) it allows retrieval of contact information of only those parties whose contact information have been added to the contact list. When a caller has to call a party that is not listed in the contact list of his phone, he has to look up the contact information of the said party at other places like the yellow book, directory assistance, Internet or other relevant sources. Once the said contact information is found, it has to be manually entered into the phone and saved in the contact list. This a cumbersome and time consuming process. It is also not possible to find the contact information of parties at all times, simply because the resources needed to find such information is not always readily available; for example while driving.
Some modern phones, especially cellular phones, are web enabled and allow for surfing the Internet. An example of such service is the wireless ‘Google’, which allows callers to browse the Internet on their cellular phone. This feature enables callers to find contact information of a party from available resources on the Internet, like www.yellowpages.com. However, this system too, has limitations and drawbacks; 1) it requires manual entry of the desired party's information, including general location, into the web browser of the cellular phone; 2) it does not enable the caller to automatically save the contact information obtained from the search result into the contact list of his phone; 3) it does not enable the caller to automatically dial the phone number displayed by the search result; 4) requires a new search for each individual party; and 5) requires the caller to regularly subscribe to internet service, which can be quite expensive.
It is a known fact that most contact information search is done to find phone numbers and contact information of local businesses. It is also a known fact that individuals do majority of their commerce with local businesses, usually within a 50 mile radius of their residence or place of work. However, there is no method, system or solution in the prior art that enables callers to download and save contact information of local businesses into the contact list of their communication device, without requiring them to manually enter the contact information of each individual local business individually. This is a cumbersome and time consuming process, and is unfeasible if a caller wishes to have contact information of all local businesses saved in his communication device.